GOSHEN — By a small victory vote, Goshen Community Schools voted to move forward with Kimochis Resource Tool, a program that supports emotional regulation curriculum.
Board members Roger Nafziger, Jose Elizalde, Mario Garber and Maria Sanchez Schirch voted in favor of the new program, while Kieth Goodman and Ryan Glick voted against it. Bradd Weddell passed on his vote.
Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum Tracey Noe said the tool is designed to help students recognize their emotions, why they’re having it, and the skills necessary to move forward.
“For instance, if a student is mad at school … we want them to be able to say, ‘I’m mad and this is why I’m mad,’ but what we don’t want them to do is ‘I’m mad so I’m going to hit you or throw something at you or kick the ball outside the fence so you have to go get it because I’m mad.’ What we want them to do is say ‘I’m mad, this is why I’m mad, and you can help me by apologizing to me or by helping me to make it right,’” Noe explained. “It builds the skills to help them realize what it is I’m feeling, what’s happening to me as I’m feeling it and the teachers can walk them through it.”
Noe said the program provides a tool that teachers have been requesting including 5-10 minute lessons weekly and pilot program teachers have said it’s made a difference in their classrooms.
“When we talk about apprenticeships and things like that, we’re talking to businesses where they have adults that can’t regulate their own emotions,” Noe said. “So they’re in whatever field they’re in, in factories, and they’re losing jobs because they didn’t know what emotion they were having and they couldn’t control it.”
Noe said the reason they started looking was after some surveys two years ago that indicated that parents and teachers were concerned about how children couldn’t control their emotions.
“It’s something our teachers have wanted,” Noe said.
Noe reiterated that the program would not replace therapy but simply serve as interventions, although it can also be used by school counselors.
“School teachers are not therapists and they’re not meant to be therapists,” Noe added.
Glick argued that articles he read showed that teachers used the tools in the Kimochis Resource Tool outside the model intended by the company and for agendas outside the purview of public education.
Superintendent Jim DuBois said the district should put in safeguards surrounding any social-emotional teaching.
“This isn’t like the end-all-be-all, the only thing we’re going to do,” DuBois said. “We’re doing what’s called PBIS. Positive Behavioral Intervention Supports work in that area, too. I would love to see us find a good character program too. There’s some out there. … We want to give everybody a chance to learn as a kid and understand their emotions and do thinking around feelings and how your behavior can be driven by your feelings, not that it should be, but often times can be; and that when [we] put the proper logic model behind how we work with kids in that way and then we have tiered intervention supports for kids …
"What’s the behavior that we have issue with, what’s coming before that behavior, and what’s the consequence of that behavior? ... When you look at a student and focus on the behavior and then you hypothesize a plan on how you’re going to help them, this might be a tool that we can use in our toolbox.”
Glick told members of the board that he had issues with a primary principal of the program, which indicated that while all emotions are OK, some behaviors are not.
“My initial analysis of that is that’s not true, and if we go into our classrooms — as nice as it might be for kindergartners or somebody who has emotional issues and might need something they can picture — if they’re being told that ‘every emotion is OK, you just have to regulate behavior,’ that denies the fact that behavior is tied to the emotions,” Glick said.
“And there are many emotions that are not OK, and children have to learn the character to say ‘I can’t have that emotion,’ whether it’s emotions of greed or envy, issues that cause strife, conflict, warring amongst us … children conflicting on a playground, there’s lot of emotions that go in there, and they’re not OK, and to tell the students you can say ‘Hey, you know what, I’m feeling this emotion or that emotion,’ your box for them to choose, with the assumption that there’s nothing wrong in there.
"There’s no morality; it’s just regulated behavior. I don’t think that’s going to be successful and ultimately we’re like regulating behavior. And if it was so simple, where’s the evidence from hundreds of millions of billions of dollar that have been spent on these SEL programs, when we’ve raised up generations of young people who could regulate their emotions without them. What happened between those generations and ours?”
Noe said Goshen Community Schools has not yet spent any money on social-emotional learning but claimed that emotional learning and education are both necessary. She also explained that the Kimochis Resource Tool would also help bring the program home to parents.
“Sometimes it’s lack of sleep that’s causing a kid to not be able to regulate. It’s not always emotions,” DuBois added. “They may have allergy issues and those kinds of things can cause that, so we have to look at the kid holistically as we work with them and, here’s the key: work with their parents.”
The board was split but did vote in favor of the addition to elementary programming.
OTHER ITEMS
• Sources of Strength will be expanding to Goshen Intermediate School. The program, approved by the board in a unanimous vote, is a tool that helps prevent suicide, violence, bullying, and substance abuse. Five teachers were trained in the program this summer. The program is already at the high school and junior high, but Noe admitted it’s been struggling in recent years.
• The Goshen School Board took a moment during the meeting to honor Goshen Intermediate School nurse Stephanie Hershberger for performing life-saving measures for a student at the school.
• Building trades will not be building a home. Instead, they will be remodeling a garage for a former student diagnosed with ALS.
• The Goshen School Board approved a memorandum of understanding with the HEA CareerWise for the 2024-25 Apprenticeship Program.